Monograph

«Remov'd from human eyes»: Madness and Poetry 1676-1774

  • Ilaria Natali,

The years 1676 and 1774 marked two turning points in the social and legal treatment of madness in England. In 1676, London’s Bethlehem Hospital expanded in grand new premises, and in 1774 the Madhouses Act attempted to limit confinement of the insane. This study explores almost a century of the English history of madness through the texts of five poets who were considered mentally troubled according to contemporary standards: James Carkesse, Anne Finch, William Collins, Christopher Smart and William Cowper were hospitalized, sequestered or exiled from society. Their works cope with representations of insanity, medical definitions or practices, imputed illness, and the judging eye of the ‘sane other’, shedding new light on the dis/continuities in the notion of madness of this period.

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Ilaria Natali

University of Florence, Italy - ORCID: 0000-0003-4484-7994

Ilaria Natali teaches at the University of Florence and the University Institute Carlo Bo (Florence). Her research interests lie primarily in Modernist and 18th-century British literature, with particular attention to the study of modern manuscripts and the relations between science and literature.
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  • Publication Year: 2016
  • Pages: 272

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  • Publication Year: 2016

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

«Remov'd from human eyes»: Madness and Poetry 1676-1774

Authors

Ilaria Natali

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2016

Copyright Information

© 2016 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IT

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/978-88-6453-319-3

eISBN (pdf)

978-88-6453-319-3

eISBN (xml)

978-88-9273-241-4

Series Title

Biblioteca di Studi di Filologia Moderna

Series E-ISSN

2420-8361

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